Fighting for the Public University

Unless we act against education
privatisation it will set in and be difficult to reverse. It’s unrolling
nationally, and local responses need to operate in a way which engages with
this. We shouldn’t be negotiating privatisation. We should be turning it back.

Image: Tim Huitson

Jérémie Bédard-Wien from the Quebec students’ union CLASSE
has been on tour in England,
telling his story about the movement at home
against fees and in favour of public education. The Quebec mobilisation has been large, radical
and sustained. It’s combined students from the bottom up and reached out to
unions. It was confronted by aggressive police action and legal attacks on the
right to protest. Chilean student activists have
also been in Britain,
arguing for a popular struggle against the privatisation of universities. There
are lessons for the UK.

What we face in England, and potentially beyond, is
the systematic and deliberate mass privatisation of higher education. Public universities
are being transformed into profit-making operations. This is not
just in support services, but also teaching and the content of courses. The
case for university privatisation is not supported by evidence. It’s
an act of faith, in private profit over the public good.

The basis for new private providers is in
train. There’s large-scale outsourcing at places like Sussex University. Unions and the
left need to be up to speed with the way the substance of higher education is
being turned upside down. Union branches should be willing and prepared to
fight back. Trying to get a good deal locally in the new privatised university
system would smooth the way for the national destruction of public education.

The government has removed the state contribution
to students’ tuition fees, so public universities can no longer provide a
cheaper education than the private sector. Higher education minister David
Willetts has said this is so private providers can get in on a level playing
field.

Education geared around student fees,
without cross-subsidy from money-spinning areas, has fundamental implications.
At my university, business, management and economics is being massively
expanded. Support from its earnings, for community and adult education, is not
being allowed. So the latter has been closed down.

The definition of what you need to be to
become a university is being loosened. You used to need 4000 students to
qualify. This will go down to 1000. Ironically, outsourcing Vice-chancellors
don’t like this. It makes it easier for the private sector to step in and
out-compete their institutions.

Degree awarding powers are to be opened to
non-teaching organisations, like the publisher Pearson Education. Their mission
is to do one thing. That isn’t education for the public good. It’s to make a
profit. Universities’ VAT-exemption is to be extended to outsourced operations
and for-profit providers so the private sector has a cheaper route to taking
over.

High fee chargers will take middle class
students more inclined to live with large loans. The claim that poor students
aren't deterred by high fees is based on shaky grounds. Low fees
universities will become working class institutions. These will find it
difficult to cover their costs so will close. A road in for working class
students will be blocked. Those who won’t oppose this acceleration of
inequality are complicit with it.

The Labour Party have said they’ll reduce
the top rate of fees from £9000 to £6000. That’s better. But it won’t reverse
the privatisation process. Labour kicked it all off with the introduction of student
paid fees. They’ve pushed ahead the privatisation and marketisation of health,
and deregulation of labour and finance. A reversal of education privatisation
won’t come from this quarter. The future of education will have to be fought
for by protest and the unions. And academics have to rise to
the challenge.

Unless we act against education
privatisation it will set in and be difficult to reverse. It’s unrolling
nationally, and local responses need to operate in a way which engages with
this. We shouldn’t be negotiating privatisation. We should be turning it back.

Of course, unions have to use consultations.
But for managements these are just about going through the motions. So unions
must ally with anti-privatisation campaigns and
support them. And if unions don’t have a clear strategy to fight privatisation
their members may stay away or look elsewhere to organise.

The campaign side needs to include, a la Quebec and Chile, the student movement and
grassroots. Unions should endorse such partners, and not oppose direct action
if that’s the way it goes. The grassroots aren’t their enemies. They are their
supporters. And when activists and students campaign against privatisation
they’re not being divisive. They’re building the strength of the movement.

We face the fast and radical reconstruction
of the university system from one based on the public good to another whose
pay, pensions and intellectual content will be geared to private profit.
It can’t be underestimated how much local actors need to wage a national battle
against this major and difficult to reverse nation-wide transformation. To do
local deals will accelerate the process and assist the transition to mass
privatisation.

Education privatisation is about support
services, but also academia, privatising
knowledge and commercialising what we teach new generations. We need not to
manage privatisation but to stop it. In how we do that there are lessons to be
learned from Quebec and Chile.

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